1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention described herein pertain to the field of computerized network systems. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, one or more embodiments of the invention enable businesses to perform accelerated synchronization, management and publication of business information across a supply chain.
2. Description of Related Art
Competitive businesses in the global marketplace rely on the efficient exchange and synchronization of business information to improve the performance of the supply chain. For instance, the synchronization of information that uniquely describes a product or service exchanged between trading partners is fundamental to building collaborative commercial relationships among retailers, manufacturers, and other supply chain participants. Various systems exist for synchronizing such business-to-business information between trading partners. These systems, often referred to as Global Data Synchronization (GDS) systems, are important because effective GDS systems lead to consolidation and management of master product data, which greatly increases internal supply chain efficiency. Many also consider GDS to be a fundamental building block for realizing the full potential of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Electronic Product Code (EPC) tags on various product configurations (e.g., pallets and cases of a particular product). GDS and EPC initiatives are designed to work together to improve business performance amongst a set of interrelated trading partners through the sharing of well-formed data that describes information associated with a set of products or services.
More and more businesses are utilizing entities referred to as data pools that act as an interface point between supply chain entities such as manufacturers and retailers. These data pools provide a message-based framework for synchronizing item, organization and pricing data. For instance, manufactures publish data to the data pool in accordance with a set of specific rules defined by the data pool and other parties such as retailers or other manufactures subscribed to the data pool are kept in sync with information published to the data pool.
Retailers that desire to order and sell a product made by a manufacturer must first find the product so that it may be ordered. In order to find a product of interest, an entity known as the “Global Registry” may be employed in order to lookup the basic parameters of a product. The lookup generally includes the location of the data pool where the full product information can be found. The predominant registry in the industry is known as the “GS1 Global Registry™”. The Global Registry stores unique product identifiers (referred to as GTINs and discussed in further detail below) and location information about each of the respective parties in the supply chain (e.g., Global Location Numbers called GLNs and also discussed in more detail below). Put generally a GTIN describes what an item is and a GLN describes who has and where the item is located. The association of data pools and the Global Registry described herein are known as the Global-Data Synchronization Network (GDSN).
For businesses in the manufacturing sector (data pool suppliers) and retailing sector (data pool customers) to utilize the Global Registry and synchronize data with one another each party typically performs the following basic steps. First internal supplier data (e.g., source information) is reviewed and if necessary modified to conform to generally accepted standards (see e.g., FIG. 1A, step 100). For instance, each product or unit of sale is given a GTIN. The GTIN provides a basis for identifying when a unit of sale passes through a retail point of sale, is delivered, ordered, invoiced, or is otherwise involved in a transaction. A GTIN comprises up to 14 digits and can be associated with raw materials or completed end user products and may also include services. The number allocated to a product needs to be communicated from the manufacturer through the supply chain in advance of transaction, so that business transactions can be set up.
In terms of data pool information exchange, the supplier of information may also define information that uniquely identifies itself and other legal entities, trading parties and locations considered part of or needing access to supply chain information. This identifying information, typically referred to as a Global Location Number (GLN), provides a standard means of identification. The GLN is simply a 13-digit number used to uniquely identify any legal, functional or physical entity. Some examples of parties and locations that can be identified with GLNs, include but are not limited to, functional entities such as a purchasing department or customer number within a legal entity, an accounting department, a returns department, a nursing station, or any other group that performs a definable set of functions. GLNs may also act as a mechanism for identifying physical entities such as a particular room or section of a building, a warehouse, or aspects of a physical location such as a loading dock, delivery point, cabinet, or other location specific information. It is also feasible to utilize GLNs to identify buyers, sellers, companies, subsidiaries or divisions such as suppliers, customers, financial services companies, or any other entity or trading partner.
After the supplier's internal data is prepared for a given source data pool, the data is then uploaded to the source data pool that complies with appropriate standards (see e.g., FIG. 1A, step 102). There are various data pools and each data pool has mandatory and optional aspects. For instance, a data pool may collect descriptive data that contains a standardized set of attributes, values, trade item information, trading partner information, product and packaging information (e.g., shipping unit information such as a pallet), consumer unit (e.g., typically a trade item in its retail form). In at least one instance attributes are used as a mechanism to name associated data (e.g., Color) and values identify the data itself associated to the attribute name (e.g., Blue). Both attributes and values can be recursive and thereby identified as a repeatable attribute/value. Any product or service having a need to retrieve pre-defined information that may be priced, ordered or invoiced at any point in any supply chain is typically referred to as a trade item. In this context, the term consumer unit is intended to indicate to the retailer that a particular item should be considered as a potential unit of sale.
Each data pool autonomously transfers basic information from the uploaded data to the Global Registry that in turn holds the information and stores the location of the supplier's data pool (see e.g., FIG. 1A, step 104). Customers may search the Global Registry via their own destination data pool for information about the supplier that the customer may wish to obtain as part of its subscription to the destination data pool (see e.g., FIG. 1B, step 106). The Global Registry identifies the source data pool of information that customers may request.
A synchronization engine enables trading partners to perform the publication and subscription process for sending and receiving information and synchronizes information between each of the respective data pools (see e.g., FIG. 1B, step 108). The synchronization engine allows each trading partner to maintain a single point of entry to its chosen data pool. Once implemented, GDS allows for the continuous updating of data attributes related to products for example between a plurality of computing systems in order to ensure that the data is kept identical in all locations that access the data. This synchronization process occurs in order to keep businesses up to date with changes and modifications to products and prices for example. The proper update of product data also enables a more efficient supply chain and eliminates transactions with erroneous prices or discontinued products for example.
On the manufacturer or supplier side the process of reviewing and publishing items for registration and publication to retail trading partners is in most cases a laborious process that involves development of customized applications that obtain the relevant information from the manufacture side and provide that information to the data pool in a publishable form. Another issue that arises for suppliers is that existing systems for managing and publishing data to the supplier's data pool of choice cannot efficiently handle voluminous amounts of data and have a tendency to fail once the amount of data reaches a certain threshold (e.g., 10,000 records). Hence there is a need for an accelerated and scalable system that can effectively obtain and manage supplier data to ensure that the supplier data properly conforms to appropriate standards and then publish that data to the supplier's data pool of choice for subsequent synchronization.